


Hope's Fire Burns Bright

by Merfilly



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: The depths of Bodhi's need for Galen to come, to not just give a message, had convinced him, despite the risk.
Relationships: Galen Erso/Bodhi Rook
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Hope's Fire Burns Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).

_"I can get you out of here too, Galen. PLEASE!"_

The depths of Bodhi's need for Galen to come, to not just give a message, had convinced him, despite the risk. Somehow, unbelievably, they had made it together to Saw's camp.

For all the good it had done them, it seemed.

Lyra would have been distressed to see what had come of her friend, and Galen himself was overwrought at the fact Jyn was not here!

He touched Bodhi's arm, and with just a look toward where they had come in conveyed what needed to happen. Saw couldn't help them, and so they needed to escape, again.

Bodhi steeled himself, having come to the same conclusion, when all hell broke loose.

* * *

Galen sat in one chair, alone, a hard-faced man and a woman he thought he knew standing in front of him. His hands were manacled, his face bruised from a blow that had landed in the fighting earlier, but he was unbent.

"There is a flaw," he said, speaking not to the man, but the woman. "I love my child. Other fathers love their children. The machine has a flaw, so that all daughters can live."

"You need — "

The woman drew a hand up and the hard-faced man shut up. This was what command was, this regal poise and quiet calm that the woman used. She even came closer to him, kneeling down to be eye level. "We have her here. A most difficult rescue, and one that has the team who got to her concerned we wasted resources.

"But for love of that daughter, you built a flaw in the Empire's superweapon?"

"I prayed she lived, and did all I could to hold them back. I had no other way to be true to her, to my wife." Galen met her eyes. "There is a flaw."

She read him, as if gleaning every scrap of data from his gaze, and then stood.

"Release his hands, and take him to our tactical room. Give him what he needs to show us this flaw."

"And my daughter?" Galen pressed.

She paused at the door, and looked at him. "I will ask her if she will keep you company."

* * *

Bodhi came.

Not Jyn.

"I met your daughter."

Galen looked at him, but never stopped bringing the plans in his mind to life on the data pad. He made himself focus on the task.

"Two Guardians led the Rebels to us, barely ahead of the Empire," Bodhi added. "They have fallen in with her now, and the Rebel that is her captor, as well as his droid. She is full of anger, of pain."

"She was so small when they killed her mother, because of me," Galen said. "To learn I have been cooperating is not likely something she wished to know."

"I told her, I said, Galen is a great man. Galen made them work slow, and he will save us all."

Sometimes Bodhi's faith in him was humbling, and others it was a shield to lean on, a reminder that what he did was for others. He had helped make that monster because of Krennic's faith in him, and yet Galen knew that Krennic had only ever seen himself guiding their partnership.

Bodhi had faith in him for his own sake alone, with no ulterior motive. It was far more like that which he'd shared with Lyra.

"She will have to choose for herself."

* * *

He did not see Jyn until the day Garven Dreis took every single X-Wing pilot he had up against the massive battle station that could, feasibly, be the end of the Rebellion and hope everywhere. Dodonna himself drew Galen's attention to her in the command room, a gentle touch on his shoulder to bring his eyes away from the tactical simulator.

She was framed by a Rebel captain on one side, and an ex-Imperial droid on the other. Galen half took in the pair of them, but really? He could only stare at the girl that was the only legacy he truly wished to have.

"Stardust."

She pulled her chin higher before she came to stand near him, on the side away from where Dodonna stood.

"Do you really think they can do it?" she asked.

"We'll have to trust that the Force is with them," Galen said evenly, his eyes moving back to the display. He let his hand rest on the side of it, near Jyn. Out there, with an unfamiliar ship, Bodhi was risking it all for his sake, believing in his plans.

A moment later, he was holding her hand, and thinking that it would all be right now.

* * *

"…would not have been possible without strategic analysis from an inside source who chooses to be anonymous," Senator Organa stated, even as the crowd settled from cheering the pilots that had survived the deadly attack to bring down the Death Star.

Galen noted the old man standing back with the other high dignitaries, watching the young blond pilot with a father's eyes, and had to squeeze Jyn's hand where she sat beside him. Then he looked back up at Bodhi, standing near that blond, and knew that the fires of hope truly raged in the galaxy again.

They had beaten the Empire once. Now, they just had to keep pressing their hold on people like Bodhi, like young Andor, and like his Stardust.


End file.
